we are not always what we seem
by jadeddiva
Summary: He knows Emma is not dead, knows that she is somewhere in her realm happy with her son, but this separation is as final as any death. He will never see her again. She will linger in his thoughts each day but he will never see her again and so she is as good as dead - as lost as Liam, and Milah, and all the names that he carves on his body and soul in remembrance.
1. one: Hook

**we are not always what we seem**

He feels like he is dying.

Hook is no stranger to the perils of the drink - thought he had built up a tolerance long ago, but the sun is too bright in his eyes and his head throbs in a way that it hasn't since the first time he drank himself into oblivion after Liam's death.

He knows Emma is not dead, knows that she is somewhere in her realm happy with her son, but this separation is as final as any death. He will never see her again. She will linger in his thoughts each day but he will never see her again and so she is as good as dead - as lost as Liam, and Milah, and all the names that he carves on his body and soul in remembrance.

His stomach reels, and he limps to the chamber-pot in the flea-bitten inn where he's staying, barely making it in time.

When Hook is done worshiping the porcelain bowl, he stands shakily and pours himself a glass of water from the pitcher nearby, trying to avoid looking at his reflection in the mirror (he does not want to see what he looks like, so wretched and desperate, because it may truly break him). He considers the cost of the room, and wonder if he should pay for another night, drown his sorrows in more rum, but he remembers the prince as he left. If he says in one place for too long, the prince might find him (he know he was growing on the man) and seeing the sorrow in his eyes, and that of his wife - it is too much for Hook to bear. They at least had some claim to Emma; he had none. He will never have any claim to her, even if he told her - even if she -

He will never know.

It should not matter.

It does, and it always will.

He wonders if he should have stayed with her family, tried to make something for himself there, but the space where Emma and her lad should be would always exist, and nothing could fill it. He could always return - the prince would welcome him back, he's sure - but his sadness is tinged with embarrassment. It is too presumptuous for him to mourn her when she was never his.

No, he can't go back.

Hook wipes his mouth with his hand, dares glance up at the mirror at the wretched man that looks back at him. _This man is not a man of honor_, he thinks. _ He is not a man the Savior could love_. The man whose reflection stares back at him is a broken man, and a pirate. He is a traitor and a liar, a lost soul and a villain, and this is his unhappy ending.

After all, villains don't get happy endings.

…

He spends the better part of a week buried in the bottom of a tankard of ale, and the better part of the next week trying to sleep off the repercussions of his actions. He has enough coin (courtesy of the prince) to allow himself a modicum of privacy and comfort, and so the innkeeper doesn't toss him out – yet.

Hook lingers in the tavern, listening to the gossip from the port. He makes inquiries about his ship but there are none who have seen it. He tries to not let the lack of news dash his hopes – Regina said it would be here, and he does not doubt the queen (and, as he told the prince, he can always find another ship. It would not be the same, but nothing is when everyone you love is as good as dead).

What the townspeople do talk about are the flying monkeys.

Hook has never seen a flying monkey but he has heard enough ridiculous stories from townspeople that he doesn't take it seriously (also, he has been drinking, so he may be prone to hyperbole of his own…)

There are also whispers of a witch but they are just whispers, so when he retrieves his horse from the stable and sets off to another town and another harbor, the only thought on his mind is that he must get farther and farther from Emma's family and their kingdom. There is nothing for him here, and there might be at sea.

Or so he hopes.

(Perhaps he did learn something from Emma and her family after all.)

…

He does find the _Jolly Roger_ after all, but not before someone else tries to lay claim on his ship.

How he takes the ship back is a story in and of itself – or so he tells the crew he acquires. He softens the rough edges, embellishes the details, and threatens that anyone who challenges him can walk the plank (and he does love a challenge, Captain Hook, so better learn that lesson now, men or…well…).

The real story is that the would-be captain was a scoundrel and a thief and made the mistake of manhandling a young blonde serving girl at a tavern where Hook just happened to find himself that evening.

When he goes below deck to the Captain's quarters, he thinks about the fact that he let the other man go, which he would not have done at his darkest but which he did because the serving girl had green eyes the color of sea glass. When she looked at him, lip cut and eyes terrified, all he could see was Emma climbing the beanstalk and Emma in Neverland, feels the muggy air of that jungle against the back of his neck, and think _this is not all that I can be_.

There is more to him than villainy, more to him than cruel acts and revenge. Emma showed him that he was capable of more than just treachery and even though he once thought his heart could be whole with her, he will not let its fractured state dictate all his choices.

That is why, even when he leaves the man unconscious and chained outside the magistrate's office, he does it with a shred of hope in his dark heart that maybe all the good that Emma did for him has not completely disappeared.

He spends his first night on his ship with the men as they set sail for the southern straits. He has not spent much time in this realm in over three hundred years and he is eager to feel the familiar breeze, and to see what riches can be found (after all, there has been turmoil here for nigh on thirty years and pickings for a pirate must be good). The crew seems to take to him immediately, though he keeps his eyes open for mutineers and hopes for the best.

_Hope_, he thinks, is such a loaded word, but it's all he feels as the ship rocks beneath him and the wind whips against his cheeks.

This is not the hope he felt in Neverland, hidden behind what he thought was the glimmering beginnings of love, but it is enough to get him through the night without a drop of rum, enough to push him forward towards the horizon line.

…

Even at sea, Emma haunts him (and he thought that leaving the forest would be his salvation. He is a bloody fool).

During the day, Hook spends time thinking about Emma, and her family, and their kingdom. When the waves are at choppy and there's a storm, he remembers their voyage to Neverland, her help at the helm, and he half-expects her to be on his left when he leaves the helm. He remembers it like its yesterday, because Emma's name is signed across his heart and even though he races the wind to forget her, he finds that he cannot.

Sometimes, he doesn't want to.

She was brilliant, Swan was, so full of spirit and so full of love for her family. Even the mere thought of her brings a smile to his lips during the most inopportune times, so much so that his crew fears him for being crazy and deranged, this man with a hook who pushes them onwards to the next port, the next destination, as if hellhounds are at their heels.

She would have made a good pirate, and when the blood sings in his ears as they outrace a royal frigate or the sunset shines gold and pink, he pretends that she is with him, his own personal savior hovering just out of sight. He thinks of stories that he would tell her as they go about their daily routine - stories Liam told him, stories of the sea - and whispers them to himself as he wakes. He imagines the laughter that would pour from her lips as the_ Jolly _crashes through waves, wonders if the constant state of fight that she lived in could have escalated into something else. He'd seen it once before - their dalliance in Neverland – and even though she is a world away and he will never see her again, she is a drug that never leaves his veins, an addiction he cannot give up.

The dreams come at night and they start simple as he relives Neverland, relives the kiss, and with each passing day his lonely mind takes over. Sometimes she is pulling him towards her, deepening the kiss, lips eager. Sometimes she takes things further, all breathy moans and ready sighs as their layers are peeled away before his eyes and he sinks into her. Always he wakes to find himself hard and needy and embarrassed, because she is not his and never will be (for all he knows, she is someone else's love now, though the thought is difficult to swallow).

He knows he was not worthy of her – that he is just a pirate and a broken man, as evidenced by his easy return to his former state of being. He knows that he will never see her again – will never have a chance to be worth - and even though he's far less brutal than he once was, he is still a pirate, and Emma a princess, and never the twain shall meet.

And yet, when the sunset shines gold and pink through the windows of his quarters, he thinks of Emma, and keeps these little memories buried inside him as if the memories are a precious jewel he must protect at all costs and forgetting would be tantamount to negligence.

Hook did promise her that much, after all.

…

It is nearly a year when the first message arrives…as if by magic.

It is magic, he knows when he looks at the faint purple hue of the parchment that appeared on the table in Hook's quarters, and he reads it once – twice – before her realizes that even though it is not signed, it has been sent by Emma's people. The message tells of a dark power that threatens Emma's family and their kingdom, and it is asking for his help.

At first, he thinks he might get rid of it – hold it over the fire and watch it burst into flame. And yet, he does not. He returns to the deck, orders his men, and when he returns below it is still there, calling to him like a siren.

Hook and his crew are well beyond the Eastern Vale, and to return would take a fortnight, perhaps longer. Yet, when the second message arrives in the same location as the first the next day – a scrap of paper with regal handwriting, signed by David this time – then Hook reads and listens.

They sail hard and fast, and he hopes they can make it in time.

The third message arrives before he does.

The writing is hurried and cramped and Hook can barely decipher the instructions before he realizes that he might be too late, that Emma's family may have been ripped from their realm once again and that Emma may very well be their only hope.

(Hope again. She really has changed him, hasn't she?)

Hook orders the men to make port, to find him a horse, to help him find his way. He may be a pirate, and a broken man, but if he was their only hope…and if Emma can be reunited with her parents (and if he can find her, if he can see her smile one more time and if he can convince her to trust him…)

…well, Hook does love a challenge.


	2. two: Emma

They reach New York at 1 in the morning, and it is not until they arrive at a Holiday Inn in the suburbs that Emma feels like she can finally catch her breath.

She wakes Henry up and together they head into the hotel room. Henry collapses into bed immediately, and Emma decides to take a shower. She still feels the ash and smoke that lingered in the air and it's on her skin, in her lungs and hair and mouth. She needs to be clean.

Under the hot spray of the shower, she feels like she is waking up – everything since they found their apartment in flames has been a dream, from talking to the emergency personnel who kept asking them if they were all right, to calling the insurance company, to deciding to come here. She's got some solid contacts in New York and they can make a life here; Henry can go to a good school, they have enough money to rent in a decent neighborhood, and the insurance check should cover a deposit on an apartment, and they can start over. They can have a good life, even if they do have to replace everything that they owned save their cell phones and the clothes on their back. At least they have their lives – at least they have each other.

It's not until she's in the shower, water pouring over her shoulders and back, that the fog clears and she's gasping for breath, sobs threatening to come spilling from her lips in such an intense and frightening way that she claps her hand over her mouth and holds it back (she can't wake Henry, she can't wake him after today). She sinks to her knees in the tub, letting the water cascade over her and wash away the feeling of utter desolation that clings to her.

It was just an apartment; it was just their possessions. She still has Henry.

So why does it feel like she just lost everything?

…

Things works out in the end: her contacts hook her up with a job, the insurance money is more than enough to cover a nice apartment in Midtown (surprisingly – she didn't think their condo in Boston was worth _that_ much) near a good school and in a decent neighborhood.

Henry is chill about everything – buying new clothes (not a chore, the boy is growing like a weed anyway!) and helping her decorate the new apartment. He meets some friends at his new school and adapts in a way that makes Emma jealous. She's had to adapt to a lot of places, but never with the easiness that Henry is adapting to New York.

And it's not like she's unhappy – no, she's happier than she's ever been. There's something about a new life – _this_ new life – that sits well with her. Maybe it's because New York is always alive in a way that Boston wasn't, and she can feel the vibrant pulse of the city in her veins. Maybe it's because she's reached a new professional peak where she's good enough at her job that she feels good enough about herself. With that professional competence comes the paychecks that make the years of struggling and picking up extra jobs just to support them a distant memory.

Things are good. Things are _really_ good. They're so good that Emma is waiting, impatiently, for the other shoe to drop because she's Emma Swan and nothing this good can last forever.

When she lingers too long over breakfast, staring at the coffee like it has the answers to everything she could possibly want to know, that's when Henry stops her.

"Mom, relax," he tells her. "You don't always have to worry."

"Who said I was worried?" Emma asks, and Henry smiles at her.

"I know you, and you're always so worried that something bad is going to happen."

_That's because it always does, _Emma wants to point out. A lifetime in the foster system, eleven months in federal prison, and a complete lack of trust for anyone and everyone has made Emma hard, and even though Henry softens her up, there are parts of her that are still wary and cautious. Those parts of her know that all good things come with a price.

"Okay," she says, trying to see Henry's point of view. "I'll try to be positive. Maybe New York will be the start of something new."

"Good," Henry says.

…

Even though she tries to be positive per Henry's insistence, Emma struggles. There are moments when she feels like something is missing. She's never been too sentimental, wonders if the loss of Henry's baby pictures is what bothers her in the darkest hours of the night. She wonders about the decision to uproot and move New York instead of finding another place in Boston. She wonders if maybe she wants more than just chasing down people who skipped bail for a living.

It's only later when she realizes later that it's not that at all. What she's missing can't be bought in a store, or salvaged from the wreckage of her former life.

She's never lied to Henry about the circumstances of his birth. She's told him what he wanted to know about his birth father (not that there's much he wants to know) and she's dated somewhat casually, mostly because Henry was her sole priority for so long and there's only so much effort she wanted to expend on anyone but him. But now, she's starting to wonder if what's lacking in her life might be that – a partner to help with Henry, a lover to take care of other needs, ones she's put on hold for so long. Someone to fit into their new life in New York.

Someone to fit them.

Whoever that someone is, Emma knows he'll have to be someone special for her to be willing to let him meet Henry, or join their motley crew, but if New York is going to be about a new start…well, she'll try and give it a shot.

Henry's new friend Avery also comes from a one-parent home – his mom died when he was five, his dad (Ron) is a nice enough guy and both he and Emma understand the struggles of the single parent life. At first, Henry made some casual remarks about maybe her dating Ron, but she let the kid down easy (if she dates again, she thinks she wants someone a little more exciting than a dentist).

When she goes to pick Henry up from Avery's, Ron asks for a favor.

"Would you mind letting Avery sleep over on Saturday? There's a new video game being released this week and they seem excited," he tells her, and Emma shrugs. She doesn't see any harm in that. He's watched Henry before when she's had to go out of town on business, it seems only fair.

"Yeah, sure,' she tells him.

"And I have a date," Ron adds. He seems a bit nervous, and Emma can't blame him. Dating with a kid is serious business.

"Whatever you need," she says with a smile. "Good luck?"

"I'll need it," Ron agrees.

On their way home, Henry tells her he knows why Avery's spending the night. He adds, "You know, if you wanted to date someone, I'd be okay with it."

Emma stops, startled. Her son has never been one for preambles, preferring to cut straight to the heart of the matter, but this is completely unprecedented. She's never mentioned feeling like this to him, wonders why now, and why this.

Henry turns to her, wide grin on his face, and she raises her eyebrows.

"Any reason for this sudden announcement?" she asks, and he shrugs his shoulders.

"I just figured that I'm getting old enough," he says. "I mean, I can't have you to myself forever, can I?"

Emma smiles. Her son is growing up to be an amazing young man (even though she remembers his birth like it was yesterday, even though she can't believe he's not her baby anymore) and so she reaches for him, pulls him into a hug.

"You mean you won't get jealous if I find me a new man?" she asks, ruffling his hair. She reaches down to kiss his forehead and he brushes her off, embarrassed.

"You know you can never replace me," Henry tells her with that winning smile of his and she's putty in his hands.

"Never," she agrees. "What did you want to do for dinner?"

One large pizza with pepperoni and olives later, she's watching as Henry loads the dishwasher. She picks up the placemats absentmindedly, focusing on the question she wants to ask.

It's been a long time coming, she realizes, and even though there's a part of her that's apprehensive to stick a toe into the dating game, there's a part of her that thinks that maybe it won't be so bad.

"So you'd be okay if I started dating again?"

Henry turns away from the sink and smiles at her. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know…we have a good thing going. What if that messes it up?"

Henry shakes his head. "You've dated before and it never messed it up. Besides, what do you always tell me? You have to take a chance sometimes and see what happens?"

Emma feels her heart catch in her throat. This cannot be her son – he is too smart, too wise, too amazing to ever belong to her.

"Yeah, kid," she says. "Maybe you're right." She puts the placemats up behind the sink. "Of course, we could always take a chance that I could beat you in Mario Kart tonight."

Henry snorts. "Like that's every going to happen."

"Hey, there's always hope," Emma points out.

(The next day, she meets Walsh while shopping for furniture. Two weeks later he asks her out, and for the first time in her life, she can't think of a good enough reason to say no.)

**…**

When Henry asks to spend the night at Avery's, she doesn't pay the request too much attention. She spends the night on her own, catching up on cleaning and paperwork. It is only in the morning, when he comes home and finds out she didn't spend the night on a date with Walsh that he rolls his eyes.

"Mom," he tells her, "it's okay to have fun. Go out. Don't worry about my bedtime."

"I'll always worry about your bedtime," she responds with mock earnestness, earning her an eye-roll and an exaggerated sigh as he heads off to his bedroom.

She has been keeping things simple with Walsh – dates on weekend afternoons, lunches instead of dinners. It's going really well – he's a nice guy, she's already let him know that because of Henry she doesn't move fast, he's letting her set the pace. She's still apprehensive –what if there's something wrong? What if he lives with his mom? Can she even trust him? – and yet, Henry's words linger in her ears and her heart, and when he asks if he can sleep over at Avery's house, she sets up a date with Walsh.

It ends with a kiss at her door, and she doesn't mind it at all because it's been a long time since she kissed anyone and Walsh is…nice. Not mind-blowing by any means, but she's not 17 and doing reckless things in the name of love. She's got a kid, and responsibilities, and maybe nice is what she needs (nice is far better than she's had at any point in her life, so she'll settle for it).

By the sixth time that Henry asks to go stay with Avery, and she teases him about getting a punch-card for his frequent visits ("maybe even a free slice of pizza on your seventh?"), Emma spends the night with her friend as well.

…

One, then two months pass, and on the third month Emma's actually pretty convinced that Walsh isn't a serial killer, that he's not about to dump her body in the words or frame her for a crime, and so she takes a step forward: she introduces Walsh as her boyfriend to Henry over brunch.

Henry met him before at the furniture store, but they didn't really interact and this is…different.

This is official.

They get along really well – Walsh is nice, and asks Henry lots of questions about himself, and Henry asks Walsh questions back. Breakfast is fun, and as they sit together eating and chatting, Emma realizes that she's happy – really, truly happy, in a way that she hasn't felt for some time. Her laughs sound louder to her ears, her smiles feel bigger, and there's something about being with Henry and Walsh that she really likes.

Things progress, and over the course of the next few months Walsh becomes a constant fixture in her life – their lives, actually: he comes over for weeknight dinners, helps Henry with his homework, indulges the kid in video games. They go out on Friday nights and Henry stays home with pizza and a stern warning not to open the door to strangers, and things are good. It's nice enough that Emma wants it to continue for a long time, this nice state of feeling like she's got everything going for her.

And when he tells her that he loves her, and when Emma realizes she feels the same, it's liberating. She never thought she'd love someone again, not after Neal. She never thought she'd love someone when she had Henry to give all of her love to. It's new and scary and also maybe what she's been missing all along.

At the very least, she can give it a shot.

...

Three things happen in rapid succession:

A creeper shows up at her door swearing that he knows her.

Same creeper shows up at a restaurant and gives her an address.

Walsh proposes.

None of them are expected, and all of them are upsetting.

Emma is not surprised that she's got a crazy stalker swearing that he knows her (he knows something if he knows about her thing with lies) and she feels like this was going to happen sooner or later when your job is to find bail jumpers and bring them back in. Her stalker she can handle with a call to the cops.

The proposal is tougher to swallow.

Emma shouldn't be surprised that Walsh proposed but she is and in an intense way that sets her whole world off-kilter. Things were going well, she was happy, so why be so terrified at the prospect of change? Even Henry seems to like incorporating Walsh into their happy family.

That night, in bed, she stares at the shadows on the ceiling created by the lights of the city where she found her fresh start, and wonders why she's so freaking scared. She doesn't do fast but it's been thirteen years with Henry and the eventual understanding that maybe should could love again. It's been eight months since Walsh entered their lives, and she's never been happier.

But if Neal taught her anything, sometimes happiness comes with a price, and she can't shake the feeling that something is off (no, that crazy guy in the pirate costume can't be right, she's just letting her imagination run away with her).

She'll sleep on it, and make up her mind in the morning. Maybe then she'll have a better handle on what she feels.

(And so it makes perfect sense that by the end of the next day, any decision is moot because none of it was real to begin with.)

…

Henry and Hook – no, Killian now – are downstairs loading suitcases into the Bug, giving Emma a moment to breathe and to look around the apartment one last time.

She will miss this life. She will miss having memories of Henry's childhood, memories she sure now were given to her by Regina, and she will cling to them like she's never clung to anything else before. It hurts – oh _god_ does it hurt – to think that the reality is she gave him up and that old familiar feeling of sorrow at the decision creeps into her bones to stay (and not even the year of memories that Henry thinks are real can chase it away).

_Regina…_

She waits, with Mary-Margaret and David, in Storybrooke. And Henry knows nothing about any of them. Do they even know anything about her? Do they even miss her like she misses them?

"Swan."

Killian stands in the doorway. There is a grin on his face that shifts immediately when he looks at her. His eyes study her face, brow furrowing, and she wonders just what he sees here that makes him look so concerned (he knows her so well most of the time that she trusts his judgment, trusts that she looks concerned and frightened and so she doesn't look because her trust in him, coming back to find her, is enough to tell her all that she needs to know).

"I wish there was some other way," he tells her, hints of that earnestness she's come to know and appreciate slipping into his tone.

"There would be no other way." Emma shakes her head. "I'm the Savior, and being the Savior means always drawing the short end of the stick."

She realizes in that moment that there's no part of her that's angry at him for coming to find her. That she would rather know the truth about Walsh, and the truth about her memories, then live in blissful ignorance.

That all happiness comes with a price.

The metaphor seems to confuse him for a second, but he recovers quickly enough, poking his cheek with his tongue before resting his hand against his belt buckle. The gesture is so familiar that it makes her smile, and he smiles in return.

"Well then, Swan, perhaps we should prepare to set off?" He flourishes his hand towards the door and she grabs her bag off the kitchen table.

"Yeah," Emma says. "Let's go see what big bad curse awaits us in Storybrooke."


End file.
